Alexander "Sándor" Wolf (born

Eisenstadt Eisenstadt (; ; ; or ; ) is the capital city of the Provinces of Austria, Austrian state of Burgenland. With a population of 15,074 (as of 2023), it is the smallest state capital and the 38th-largest city in Austria overall. It lies at the foot o ...

21 December 1871: died

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2 January 1946) was an Austrian wine trader and collector of antiquities. His collection formed the basis for the museum which he founded at

in 1926 and which has now become the Burgenland Regional Museum (''Landesmuseum Burgenland'').

Life

Sándor Wolf was the son of Ignatz Wolf and his wife Minna Gomperz/Wolf. Ignatz Wolf headed up "Leopold Wolf Söhne", a business which had grown to become one of the largest wine wholesalers in the

land Land, also known as dry land, ground, or earth, is the solid terrestrial surface of Earth not submerged by the ocean or another body of water. It makes up 29.2% of Earth's surface and includes all continents and islands. Earth's land sur ...

. Starting in 1901 Sándor organised a succession of archaeological excavations of prehistoric and Roman sites in and around

. The abundance of findings from these activities formed the basis of what now became his collection of antiquities. From 1920 he extended his activities to other, more recent periods, building a collection that reflected the history of

Burgenland Burgenland (; ; ; Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian: ''Burgnland''; Slovene language, Slovene: ''Gradiščanska''; ) is the easternmost and least populous Bundesland (Austria), state of Austria. It consists of two statutory city (Austria), statut ...

and, especially, the Jewish history of the region. From this came his initiative to found, in 1926, the Regional Museum (''"Landesmuseum"'') in the "Leinnerhaus", a large originally baroque town house in Eisenstadt which had been used as a music school (among other things) during the nineteenth century and which was acquired by the Wolf family in 1918. The collection continued to grow, notably with purchases from a major auction at Plankenwarth Castle (''"Schloß Plankenwarth"''). By 1932, without counting the archaeological items, the collection already comprised more than 5,800 objects. Early in 1938 Austria was

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with

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as part of

Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

's strategy for again redrawing the map of central Europe. Government policy for

now became actively anti-Semitic. Sándor Wolf, who was Jewish, found himself arrested by the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

and forced "voluntarily" to surrender his assets and his collection. Together with his sister, Frieda Löwy, he was forced to abandon his homeland, fleeing by way of

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and

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, where they acquired an estate in

. After the

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they prepared to return home to

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

, but their preparations were interrupted at the last minute when Wolf died following a short and unexpected illness.

Museum and memorials

In Eisenstadt the historic ''Wolf-Haus'' / ''Wolf-Museum'' is an integral part of the Burgenland Regional Museum (''Landesmuseum'') building. Parts of the former Wolf collection were acquired from the regional government in 1958 and are on display on the ''Wolf-Haus'' section of the museum. Today an Eisenstadt street has been named after him "Alexander-Wolf-Gasse". The Wolf family mausoleum can be found in the so-called "''Wolfsgarten''" in the city's Oberberg quarter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolf, Sandor 1871 births 1946 deaths Ashkenazi Jews in Mandatory Palestine Austrian Ashkenazi Jews Austrian collectors Austrian emigrants to Mandatory Palestine Austrian people of Jewish descent Oberlander Jews People from Eisenstadt

Life

Museum and memorials

Further reading

References